


Agave in Illyria

by Selden



Category: Bacchae - Euripides
Genre: Horror, Makeover, Period-Typical Sexism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 10:08:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2808590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selden/pseuds/Selden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Poor Semele, in the garden,<br/>Caught a god within her eye<br/>And great Zeus, that boundless circle<br/>Sighed and opened up his thigh.</p><p>And Agave, on the mountain<br/>Heard a god say open wide.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Agave in Illyria

**Author's Note:**

  * For [joy_shines](https://archiveofourown.org/users/joy_shines/gifts).



> In his _Astronomica Poetica_ , the first century writer Gaius Julius Hyginus reports that Dionysus descended into Hades to bring back his mother Semele, burnt up by the sight of Zeus, to live a goddess.
> 
> Details of the death of Agave, Semele's older sister, are scarce and contradictory. Her final lament is one of several passages lost from the end of the _Bacchae_.
> 
> According to Hyginus, a writer admittedly described by his own most recent editor as 'adulescentem imperitum, semidoctum, stultum' - 'an ignorant youth, half-learned, and stupid' - Agave in her exile travelled to Illyria, where she married the king, Lycotherses, and then killed him to obtain the throne for her father Cadmus.

 

The burning girl comes to me in the afternoon.

I am sitting before my mirror in my bedroom waiting for my second wedding.

I see her come up close behind me in the mirror, smiling, burning.

 

I turn around and she is still there, holding a comb, smiling.

Around her the room is quiet, the high painted walls, the great carved bed, the shady doorways leading deeper into the palace, the place on the floor where they threw the sand. Something moves in the corner of my mind, a vine, growing.

Did I say there was something strange about this girl? I cannot bring it to mouth. She is a fine girl, bringing the comb crackling down through my hair.

 

I consider my face in the shining mirror.

 

I am Agave, I say, daughter of Cadmus, wife of the sown man Echion, Agave of the smokeless meat.

 

 _Agave of the white feet_ , says the girl.

 

Yes I say, daughter of Cadmus, wife of Lycotherses, exile in the east.

 

 _Ah_ , says the girl.

 

_Well she says I have often been pleasing to the masters of the house. I am here to_

_Settle your wedding gown upon your shoulders_

_Sweep charcoal black around your shining eyes_

_Adjust your sweetly talking tight laced girdle_

_And tuck your locks behind your golden crown._

_And if you so desire I will stuff plugs of foam between each soft white toe and finger_

_and paint your nails red in a little local chaos of_

_Toluene_

_Dibutyl phthalate_

_Formaldehyde_

_And I will hold my tongue which as we know is hardest for a woman,_

_Jackal and hide, laughing in doorways if you’ll let them, behind the rows of little pots_

_In various shades of red._

 

Goodness I say. I feel like a girl again.

 

The comb crackles. Its teeth in the mirror catch the light and glow red.

 

 _So_ , says the girl, _what brings you to Illyria._

 

Really, she must be new here. Heaven knows they are always whispering in corners in the language of the country. Strangers, they say. Foreigners. Barbarians.

I will not tell her how I lost my city, seven gated Thebes.

As I will lose my father, god-promised, snake-shifted, holy skin-slipper coiled fat in the long light

My sisters, poor unmothered girls

As I unmonstered by the angry god have lost

My kindly madness

To the opening sky.

Only my son I keep. I taste his meat still.

 

I was made to leave my house, I tell the girl.

 

_Made to leave Thebes, the seven gated city._

 

Oh. I forgot. I told her who I was. It’s why I don’t do that often. Women, you know, will talk.

 

 _Agave of Thebes_ , the girl says. _Daughter of Cadmus, wife of Echion, mother of Pentheus, aunt of Acteon, great-aunt to Laius, great-great-aunt to Oedipus, Eteocles, Poynices, Ismene, Antigone –_

 

The names curve down my throat like the teeth of a dragon

One of them sticks

Pentheus. I say I didn't mention him.

I can't say I know most of those others

 

But I first met that boy in the dark inner rooms

Where womb-blood got into his eyes

The women stopped working and stilled all their looms

 

The pollen stopped drifting from sweet golden blooms

A son for the house ladies what a fine prize

Kneel for your young prince

Wipe open his eyes

Lie in sweet young mother for nine golden days

Let the spindles stop spinning and the stars in their spheres

Crank their way back to the start of the world

 

 _I take it you knew him well_ , the girl says.

 

Well I say he was my son

What can I say

My lust for family

honour takes the day

 

It is a woman's glory to give a son to the ruling house.

A house without a son is eyeless

Monstered

Mothered by squatting softness

And attended only by the pouting mouthing dead.

 

 _The house of Thebes has other sons_ , says the girl. _I assure you it continues for the present_. She is working sweet oil into my long dark hair.

 

I should have such insolence punished.

But the palace is so calm, and her hands are very warm.

I wonder what it is like to be a mirror.

Only a skin stretched across desire

Or a lake of bronze, red hot.

 

Thanks to my second husband

I know what it is like to be a luck-charm.

Your bloodline is touched by the gods, dear Agave,

Your luck-curse will strengthen the land.

It sways high over his palace

Like a great green tree of greasy smoke.

 

It looks down at Illyria

With the smart eye of a snake

Or the milk eye of snakeskin

Or the round black mouth

Of god-riddled Cassandra

Within the high gold halls of seamless gleaming Troy.

 

My dear you should beware, my dear, beware. You think your men will keep out strangers, but I walked straight in here, didn’t I. I thought the same thing, once.

Then I went out of the city and I let my son in.

 

 _Yes_ says the girl _I hear Jocasta had the same kind of problem_.

 

And I can’t get him out, you see, it’s the taste. Iron on the tongue, milk in the rocks, honey coming from the squinnied sockets of the cheerful grinning dead. The ground quakes with it, like I do, poor old blood-posset, sack of shaking stuff. Don’t get old, girl, you’ll lose your figure.

 

 _I wouldn’t worry about that_ , says the girl. _I haven’t even given birth_. She cinches in my girdle. _You're young and bleeding yet,_ she says _. You can bear more children._

 

I know that what she says is true. But I do not think I could stand to again be a mother. I have been a mighty hunter, and now I am a staff for my father in his exile, clearing a place for him as he deserves. Is that not enough, I want to say.

 

Gold pins for my hair. The girl takes the pins in her mouth. _Hold still_ , she says, between her teeth.

 

I remember my first wedding day, how heavy the gold was on me. Echion sweating. He knew he was marrying the granddaughter of a god. Do you remember being a tooth in the mouth of the dragon, I once asked him. Before my father planted you in the ground of Thebes.

He did not answer, which I can understand. I know now what it is like to be a tooth locked in the smile of a god, biting down.

I remember my son with his lips all red and his eyes done up in kohl. He took his hair down from its pins so I would know him, but I kept on tearing at his dolled-up flesh. I remember him younger, too, in the women's quarters, lifting the little bone pots, the clay lids. What does this one do, mother? And this one?

He was a fine young man, I tell the girl. A little serious, but time and a girl would have seen to that. He was made king too young, perhaps, but my father was an old man. Marrying too close to the gods will wear you down, you know. And he didn't forget his mother once he was king. I had every honour. Rich stuffs and neat slave girls. The looms were never still.

 

 _My son came for me in the land of the dead_ , says the girl. Her pale waxy fingers are painting my face. _He hung his crown in the sky so that the dead would not sully it, and he came to the grey places smelling like wine and took me away to the upper air._

 

That's very nice, dear, I say. I remember distinctly that this girl told me she has birthed no children. But then, she is smoothing the face of a woman with no house to her name, with exile heavy on her tongue, the dry-wombed adornment of a foreign king. And although this room is still in the afternoon sunlight, I can hear my father heaving his bulk through the long halls outside. He isn’t dragon-born himself, being the sower not the sown, but such things are catching.

My own son, they said, had not enough woman’s blood in him; too much of the tooth.

There are no footsteps remaining in the outer palace, only the light tread of this girl as she works at my eyes, darkening the inner lid. Gold dust blinks in the blackness. I believe that she may be a little touched in the head.

 

She wipes her hands on the cloth at her waist.

She is lining up little pots on the table, sweet oil she says to spread on my white feet.

_We have scents here in several flavours._

_Lemon fresh._

_Mountain air._

_Forest glade._

_Folded loss._

 

The wine-god told us we would lose the city. He told my father he would lose his human shape, after some little time. Snakes are sacred to the grape-god. His mad women wear them in their hair.

By then I had already remembered quite precisely how I had lost my son.

 

 _Forest glade_.

 

On the deeply folded mountain, in the sweetly folded glen, did I hold him, did I take him, when I took him, when I tore him.

We ripped him apart, you know, like ripe blue meat.

We held him down.

Did I core myself on his sharp young prick before we laid him out like prime cuts upon the table.

I ask this although I know perfectly well that I did not. All I did was tear him apart like a man ripping his way into his wedding night. I carried his head into the city myself, yelling delight out of my nightingale throat.

 

 _Well, it wouldn’t be the last time_ , says the girl, _for our family_.

_Oedipus ploughed his tooth right back into the soil where it came from._

_But it’s a strange mother who leaves long furrows in her own sweet son._

 

I fitted his head back on his torn body, I say. Then my nephew the god came down from the heavens.

 

_Go up the mountain with a boy-mask on_

_Come down a mother with a wet red son._

 

 _Forget it, Agave_ , she says.

_He's gone to join the bleeding choir._

 

She smiles up at me and works the oil into my feet. I scent the air, but all I smell is, faintly, burning flesh.

 

 _Boys will be boys_ , says the girl. _They'll do for the city in the end, you know. Eteocles and Polynices, Oedipus's brother-sons, will bring the gates down with their squabbling. They'll get enough men killed that their angry sons come back for blood. Not before they gut each other beneath the walls of Thebes, of course. The earth is greedy for the house of Cadmus._

 

Barbarians. There's no point arguing with them. The girl kneels before me, easing my feet into fine sandals.

 

 _Thebes is a city with too many mirrors_ , says the girl.

  _Mother and son, brother and brother, and that death-sotted Antigone, late at the table, scrabbling over the exiled family dead, primping her last in the loop of the noose._

 _Myrrh,_ she says _, for the dead. Limonene, a-pinene, cuminaldehyde._

_White roses for our family’s silly little Mr Hyde._

_Poke them in a foam dome above_

_The grave’s gravel chips_

_Rip our arms and rend our clothing_

_For each sister’s gape-eyed gasping spy-eyed little boy_

_Moi moi._

 

I can see you understand the rites due to the dead, my dear, I say.

 

 _It's not a rite, it's a riddle_ , says the girl. _Our family is good at those as well._

 

Your family, my girl, if you will forgive me for saying so, sounds most unfortunate.

 

 _Well,_ says the girl _, we had our good times. My sisters were sometimes jealous, but of course I was beloved by a god so they certainly had cause._

 

How marvellous, I say politely.

 

 _Stands the mother full of sorrows_ , says the girl.

_In the ruins of the palace,_

_Holding in her hands a trophy_

 

_Says the woman in the garden_

_Ask him what he really looks like_

_Don't be fobbed off with an echo_

 

_Eidolon or pale reflection_

_Face to face as lovers do it_

_Open up your eyes before him_

 

_Since you have his child within you_

_He will let no harm befall you_

_Such an honour for your family_

 

_Stands the girl before the godhead_

_Opens up her eyes and_

 

 _Well_ , she says to me, _stand up_.

 

I stand up. She drapes over my shoulders my outer wedding robes. They are made in the manner of Illyria, so I cannot say if the fit is correct or the fastening right. I still lift my right heel, though, and look over my shoulder to see the hang of the gown. For a moment something moves behind me, in the corner of my eye, a burnt thing jerking like the arms of octopi when sailors beat them tender on the stonework of the harbour.

The dress falls well. For a moment my first wedding day crowds up again around me, and I feel the fingers of my sisters on my neck. The girl fastens the golden necklace: very heavy.

 _And where are your sisters_ , she asks. _Ino and sweet Autonoë, and Semele, the youngest._

They say that Autonoë died among the Megarians.

_Where is her son now, Acteon the hunter?_

He was hunted.

_By what hunters?_

By his own dogs.

_Like a fierce boar?_

As a fleet stag.

_How'd that happen?_

Angry goddess. He was watching, in the forest, as she bathed there, great Diana.

_And cliff-running Ino of the lovely ankles?_

They say she died in back in Boeotia.

_How'd she die there?_

She was hunted.

_By her own dogs?_

By her husband.

_For what reason?_

Wine-god madness. Killed her baby, sent her running, to the sea cliffs, where she perished.

_And Semele, the youngest?_

Surely everyone knows that she was burnt up by the god.

_Which god burnt her?_

Zeus the thunderer.

_Why'd he do it?_

Since she asked him.

_Asked him what?_

To show his true face.

_Why'd she ask him?_

Well we teased her. Zeus we said you must be kidding. Really sister pull the other one. It has got bells on, let me tell you.

 

Like many unmarried girls, my sister Semele was afflicted at night by green terrors. But as she grew - I suppose it was after the god first took her - she began to sleep well and grow boastful, stepping outside the maiden-house, catching the sun.

And when my sister’s belly swelled she swore blind it was Zeus himself who had put the child in her. Her boasting ceased. She began to make garlands and trace sweet and terrible dances across the courtyards, moving as if unaccustomed to gravity, looking back at us with a smile that was not her own, for we could see that the baby was sitting inside the swaying hollow of her body, staring out at us through her wide dark eyes like a bee grub in honeycomb, waiting to be born.

When the old woman who came to the door said she should ask to see the god without his mask, we should have known it was like asking the sown men of Thebes to turn back into dragon teeth. A god was already rooted in her, and she was coloured with him like milk with wine.

But we wanted so much for those teeth to fall back to the black earth, for her steps to lose their horrible lightness, for just another no-good-lying-man to look back at her, bashful, perhaps another time my darling, I swear to you I’ll show you mine one day, dear. You show me yours first.

Just ask him, we told her. It can't hurt to ask.

But instead she burned right up, that guttering slut.

Her and her fine house, too, and Zeus put the baby in his thigh behind golden pins, where he grew like a dragon tooth in red soil.

My lovely sister, Semele.

She enjoyed honey cakes, dancing, and, towards the end of her life, the growth of vines.

 

 _Ah_ , says the girl. _I see_.

 

She puts her hands upon my shoulders, turns me back towards the mirror.

 

 _Our family_ , she says, _has always put its eyes where it should not._

_Let the dogs bark_

_And the mothers reach out their warm hands_

_And take out two gold pins in an inner room_

_Let the godlight burn to the quick._

 

She puts my golden wedding crown upon my head. The air in the room is very close, hot as bull-breath. I hear my father moving outside in the corridors. She speaks again.

 

_Poor Semele, in the garden,_

_Caught a god within her eye_

_Melted down to grease and glue slick_

_Round her gleaming seamless boy._

_See him go you'll never catch him_

_Twice born gingerbread man-girl_

_Sugar and spice and slugs and snails_

_Come to see about your nails_

_Manicure you, lovely lady_

_Says the Sphinx with golden grin_

_Cracks open the steaming eyeballs_

_Licks her chops and dives right in_

_We have gossiped round the punchbowl_

_In the hallways of the dead_

_Picking at our teeth with wishes_

_Grind your boys to make our bread_

_Let me take you, my big sister_

_For a funerary twirl_

_Open up your red-caked eyelids_

_Under shadows in green worlds_

_Monsters keep it in the family_

_Or below the walls of Thebes_

_Flinch your slit away from sadness_

_Close your eyes away from me_

_I hear they say I smelt like a burnt offering after the lightning_ , she says, _thigh-bones all opened up_.

 

 _Hello it's me_ , she says, _the Lichtenberg girl._

_Lightning treed and god-bothered._

_It's good to be back with the family_

_Really; this place feels like home._

 

She takes up a cup from the dressing table. Perhaps it has been there all along. _You should drink it, sister_ , she says softly.

 

I am about to tell her that I do not drink wine, but then I see it is only milk. I drink, looking into the mirror before me.

 

When I see there what is behind me, I wait for the milk to become wine on my tongue. But it is only blood, hot and familiar.

 

 _That's right, darling_ , says my sister. _Agave of the raw meat. Drink up_. Her bubbled, burning lips stretch in a smile.

 

I drain the cup.

 

 _Perhaps it's time,_ my sister says,

_To talk of murdered kings._

 

The thing in the mirror gestures towards the thing on the bed. They threw sand on the floor where the blood came out, but then I made them go away. Lycotherses, king in Illyria, was a good man, perhaps, but not a wise one. He should have been more careful what he let in.

My father has a throne again, though. The palace is his now, and he moves through it in great curves. You can't say I haven't tried to be a good daughter.

 _You were a good mother, too_ , says Semele. _After all, your son's death saved the city. That's one up on Autonoë's boy_.

Her voice is rough as tartarous dregs of wine.

I wasn't a good sister, I say. I'm sorry.

 _Or a good wife_ , she says cheerfully. _Look at this mess._

_They say you can't take it with you, don't they, Agave. But you've brought it, all the same._

Death, I say. It's all I own.

 _You're getting the idea_ , she says. _Good answer_.

She shoves her way onto the seat before the mirror, jostling me sideways. Our twin faces stare back at us, doubled, burning.

I have been burning, I realise, for quite some time.

She jerks a thumb in the direction of the thing on the bed. Dying, I see, has not improved her manners. It does seem to have got the god out of her though, I'll say that much for it.

_Men are worried women will laugh at them_

_When they should be concerned that we’ll tear them apart_

She elbows my side chummily. Laughter comes out of her ragged throat in thick chunks.

_Or that’s what they say, in any case._

 

_Speaking of which. Do I have a job for you. Guarding the famous gates of the city, good hours, and all the men you can eat. Only qualifications necessary a familiarity with riddles and of course a taste for manflesh._

 

 _Or_ , she says _you can always go down_ _to the dusty places underground. You and your memories, held before you like a mirror. Take it from me, sister, I'd choose option B._

 

_Which is a little unorthodox, but after all, you are my sister. And, well, I still haven't done your nails._

 

She reaches a hand behind her back and brings out a brace of lion claws, fanning them out between her fat-strung fingerbones. They are sharp as dragon teeth.

 

 _A sphinx is a good answer for a girl like you,_ she says, _or at least, the best you'll likely get._

 

I observe my changed face in the round of the mirror.

 

Was he very beautiful, I ask her.

 

 _Ah_ , she says. _Brave Agave, answer-hungry_.

 

I always wanted to know, I say. But I suppose you burnt up before you could notice.

 

 _Come on, Agave_ , she says

_From the slopes of mount Cithaeron_

_To the blood-bed of Illyria_

_Comes the sphinx with eyes like marbles_

_Walking down the marble hallways_

_Greatness for the house of Cadmus_

_Guaranteed, a golden story_

_They'll be telling it for ages_

_Trust me, Freud will simply love it_

_Monsters have to come from somewhere_

_A new flesh-dress for your wedding_

_Look at father, he's skin-slipping_

_Leave your sorrow on the mountain_

_You can keep the taste within you_

_Home from exile, from the east lands_

_Like a hero in your lion-skin_

_Trailing clouds of blood behind you._

 

I shift in my seat. My wedding dress comes with me, clinging. 

 

I can feel the teeth of sharp questions already, growing within me, moving my poor burnt flesh aside as they come to my throat.

 

 _Remember_ , says my sister, _that a riddle is a kind of mirror_.

 

A woman can win greatness for the ruling house, I say. I remember, on the mountain, when I hunted.

 

My sister claps her hands. _I already knew you'd say yes_ , she says, _fat and sinew, lion and girl flesh, but it's nice to hear you say it._

 

She straightens the crown on my head and raises a white finger.

 

 _You have to do one small thing for me before you can take on your claws, Agave,_ she says _. For monsters cannot see with the eyes of mortals._

 

I understand, I say.

I take out two gold pins from my thick dark hair.

And I look into the mirror as I raise them to my eyes, all the way down, down, down.

 

And I see. I see.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I feel I should give a shout-out/unqualified rec here for an earlier Yuletide entry for the _Bacchae_ , the extraordinary [Bakcheios](http://archiveofourown.org/works/141915), by [emilyenrose](http://archiveofourown.org/users/emilyenrose/pseuds/emilyenrose). I remember vividly reading it when it was first posted, and my Semele owes a lot to hers.


End file.
